The Tempest has been part of my life for some forty years, since I took the part of Miranda in a production at Wolverhampton Grammar School in 1959. Studied for A-level, and again during my undergraduate career, the play has continued to figure in my academic life ever since.
During this continual, if intermittent, preoccupation, my view of the play has inevitably been influenced directly and indirectly by more people than it is possible to recall.
Nonetheless my deepest debts are to two teachers - Ken Parker, who produced that initial performance and taught me at A-level, infus- ing the fundamental love of literature which propelled me to university, and then Emrys Jones, whose rigorous teaching at Oxford profoundly challenged and stimu- lated my reading of Shakespeare. It is to them that I dedicate this edition.